An Introduction to the Health Care Crisis in America: How Did We Get Here?

Transcription

1 An Introduction to the Health Care Crisis in America: How Did We Get Here? by Stephanie Kelton* September 2007 * Associate Professor of Economics, University of Missouri-Kansas City and Research Scholar, Center for Full Employment and Price Stability (CFEPS), The author thanks Ryan Dodd for his research assistance and Paul Kelton for reading and commenting on early drafts of the paper.

2 INTRODUCTION This paper provides an overview of the crisis in the U.S. health care system and lays the groundwork for a deeper investigation into the nature of the current crisis. It addresses three important issues. First, it provides a snapshot of the health care system and the institutional arrangements through which health insurance is currently obtained and administered. The second part of the paper examines the institutional development of the U.S. health care system and examines the events that led to the emergence of a system in which the majority of the population relies on an employer for health insurance coverage. It is argued that the current system of employer-sponsored health insurance has its origins in: 1) the failure of early twentieth century proposals for compulsory national health insurance; 2) the impact of World War II wage and price controls; 3) the role of unions and collective bargaining in the early postwar period; and 4) the impact of preferential tax treatment for fringe benefits beginning in the mid-1950s. The last part of the paper identifies a series of disturbing trends and suggests that the limits to employer-based health insurance have been reached. The beginning of the contemporary crisis is traced back to the end of the post-wwii prosperity in the 1970s, and it is argued that employerbased coverage is unlikely to remain the dominant source of insurance in the coming decades. HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA: A SNAPSHOT OF THE CURRENT ENVIROMENT The United States does not provide health care to its citizens the way the rest of the industrialized world does. Instead of guaranteeing coverage for all, it relies on a patchwork system of market-based institutions in which those who are insured sometimes 1

3 receive coverage as a condition of employment, sometimes purchase individual policies and sometimes obtain coverage through public programs such as Medicaid 1 and the State Children s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Figure 1.1 shows where the non-elderly population (i.e. those under 65 years of age) obtains its health insurance coverage. As the data reveal, the vast majority of this population group over 60 percent relies on an employer for health insurance. 2 Figure 1.1 Sources of Health Insurance, Nonelderly Population, by Own Work Status 2005 Public 17.7% Uninsured 17.2% Individually purchased 7% Employmentbased 62.7% Source: Paul Fronstin, Employee Benefit Research Institute, May 2007 A relatively small number of those under age 65 about 7 percent purchase coverage in the individual market, and about two-and-a-half times that many today roughly 45 1 Adopted in 1965, Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that provides health insurance for the poor and disabled. The federal government offsets its share of the funding (roughly percent, depending on a state s income) from general revenue. The majority of those covered are women and children, but the vast majority of the spending supports the 30 percent or so who are disabled. 2 About half of those who receive coverage through an employer work directly for the firm, while the rest receive it as a spouse or dependent of someone who is employed by the firm. 2

4 million people lack any kind of health insurance whatsoever. 3 The number of Americans without insurance would be even more staggering in the absence of government programs, such as Medicaid and SCHIP, which have provided insurance for millions of low-income families (particularly children) when their employment-based coverage was lost (Gould, 2005). 4 In total, the government picks up the tab for almost 18 percent of the non-elderly population. 5 Figure 1.2 shows the four most important players in the health care arena. Employers, governments and individuals comprise the group of Purchasers who supply 3 Employer-provided coverage is available to some of the uninsured, though they often refuse it because they cannot afford the premiums. Indeed, studies confirm that employees are less likely to enroll in an employer s plan when the employee contribution is relatively high and that the primary reason people are uninsured is the high cost of health insurance coverage (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2004). This appears to be especially true for low-wage workers (Blumberg et. al, 2004). Many other people e.g. temp or part-time workers lack even the option to enroll in a company health plan, and still others are effectively shut out of the health insurance market due to pre-existing conditions. 4 There was a 2.3 percentage point increase in Medicaid (including SCHIP) coverage from 2000 to 2004, which partially offset the 3.8 percentage point drop in employerprovided health coverage during the same period. 5 When the elderly population is included, government coverage is extended to about 78 million people Medicare covers roughly 40 million elderly (over age 65) and disabled Americans, and Medicaid covers about 38 million of the nation s poor. 3

5 Figure 1.2 The U.S. Health Care System at a Glance out-of-pocket payments Purchasers: Employers, Government, Private Purchasers out-of-pocket payments $ $ $ Suppliers: Medical Supply, Pharm., and Computer Industries Insurers: Public or Private Insurance Agencies (e.g. Medicare, Medicaid, Kaiser, Humana, etc.) $ $ Providers: Hospitals, Physicians, Pharmacies, Nursing Homes, etc. funds to public or private Insurers. The Insurers then reimburse Providers and Suppliers by disbursing a portion of the funds they collect from Purchasers. Under this system, both Purchasers and Insurers are considered payers, and there is a fundamental conflict between them and the Providers and Suppliers who receive the payments they make. The former would generally prefer to reduce health care payments, while the latter are keen to maximize their receipts. Thus, health care costs represent a battleground among competing interests (Bodenheimer, 2005, 848). As the largest purchasers of health insurance coverage, employers are typically interested in reducing the premiums that must be paid, while Insurers have an incentive to protect their profits by maintaining higher premiums. At the same time, however, Insurers must compete for business by offering competitively-priced plans. Those covered by employer-based health insurance typically have access to one or more of the following plans. The first kind of plan is the Health Maintenance 4

6 Organization (HMO). An HMO can be any organized plan other than a traditional health insurance company that sponsors health care coverage. Some HMO plans are very restrictive, requiring that the HMO s own employees provide care in the HMO's own hospitals or clinics, while other plans are cooperative agreements among independent hospitals, doctors and other health care providers. The second type of plan is offered through a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO). These plans also offer network-based managed care, but they are generally less restrictive than their rival HMOs because patients can see a specialist without a physician s referral, and they can see any doctor they choose for a higher out-of-pocket cost. Third, there is the traditional indemnity, or fee-for-service, plan. Under this type of plan, patients see a doctor of their choice and receive reimbursement for "covered" medical expenses (i.e., those listed in their benefits summary). Fourth, is the Point-of-Service (POS) plan, which combines elements of the HMO and PPO plan types. Point-of-Service plans require enrollees to designate an innetwork physician, but they allow patients to seek out-of-network care if they are willing to pay higher out-of-pocket costs. Finally, there is the Consumer Directed Health (CDH) plan. These plans are formed from Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs) or Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), which provide traditional insurance for non-routine care but require individuals to incur higher out-of-pocket expenses to cover routine care. As Figure 1.3 shows, plans offered through PPOs are currently the most popular plan type. 6 6 Consumer-Directed Health Plans are expected to be the fastest growing type of plan in the coming years, as employers look to shift more of the cost burden to employees in their on-going attempt to cope with rising health care costs. We will examine these plans more closely in Part VI of this Series on Health Care. 5

7 Figure 1.3 Enrollment by Plan Type: Employer-Sponsored Plans, 2005 Health maintenance organization (HMO), 24% Point of Service (POS), 9% Consumer directed health plans (CDH), 3% Indemnity, 3% Preferred provider organization (PPO), 61% Source: 2006 Mercer National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans Now that we know where most Americans get their health insurance and what kind of coverage most of them have, it is time to look more closely at the characteristics of the insured population. We focus on the segment of the population that receives coverage through an employer since this is the most common source of health insurance. Our goal is to learn more about the characteristics of those with employer-based coverage. Figure 1.4 offers a gender-based look at this group. A number of points should be immediately clear. First, well over half of all men and women rely on employer-based insurance, making it the most common source of coverage for both population groups. Second, both men and women have experienced a sharp decline in employer-based coverage during recent years. Finally, females are now more likely than their male counterparts to have employer-provided health insurance. 6

8 Figure 1.4 Coverage Rates 68% 67% 66% 65% 64% 63% 62% 61% 60% 59% Employer-Provided Health Insurance, Population Under 65 Years Old, by Gender Male Female Source: Fronstin, 2007, EBRI Issue Brief No. 305 But gender is not the only area in which coverage is distributed unequally. In fact, as Blumenthal notes, there is a raft of arbitrary inequities in the availability of health insurance across population groups (2006, p. 86). Figure 1.5 details some of these inequities. 7

10 As Figure 1.5 shows, whites are more likely to have coverage than blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups; wealthier families are more likely to have coverage than poorer ones; and college educated people are more likely to have coverage than those without degrees. 7 In addition to the inequities across race, gender, income and education, there are inequities across industries and occupations. For example, those who work in professional or managerial occupations are much more likely to have employersponsored insurance than those working in construction, sales or farming. Similarly, those working in the manufacturing industry are more likely to have coverage than those employed in wholesale and retail trade. Finally, those working for large companies are more likely to have coverage than those who are employed by smaller firms. There are a number of reasons why small employers are less likely to offer health insurance than larger employers. 8 First, the relatively high cost of underwriting and administering policies for a small number of employees makes it too costly for many of them to provide coverage. Second, small employers frequently state that their employees have access to other forms of coverage (e.g. through a working spouse), making it unnecessary to offer health insurance in order to attract workers. Third, small business owners often argue that many of their employees would never acquire coverage anyway, since turnover rates are relatively high and there is usually a waiting period before benefits kick in for new employees. Finally, since small businesses have a higher failure 7 According to the Commonwealth Fund, workers earning more than $15 per hour are more than twice as likely to have employer-provided health insurance as those earning less than $10 per hour (Collins, 2004). 8 Although large firms remain more likely to offer health insurance than smaller ones, the proportion of uninsured workers employed by firms with 500 or more employees has been increasing. This is in part due to the loss of manufacturing jobs and a decrease in unionization rates (Stanton, 2004). 9

11 rate than larger firms, small employers tend to limit fringe benefits in order to keep costs under control. THE INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF EMPLOYMENT-BASED HEALTH INSURANCE The previous section provided an overview of the current state of the U.S. health care system. As noted above, the central financing mechanism is employer-sponsored private health insurance, supplemented by an array of public insurance and subsidy programs designed to help cover those most likely to lack coverage through an employer (in particular the poor and the elderly). This section of the paper explores the historical development of the employment-based system of health insurance. In particular, it explains why the U.S. market for health insurance developed primarily as a private, employment-based system when most European nations adopted some form of nationalized, compulsory health insurance. 9 Below, we examine the origins and evolution of employment-based insurance and show that it emerged largely as an accident of history that evolved in an unplanned way (Blumenthal, 2006, p. 82). The institutional evolution of the American health care system is, perhaps, most fruitfully examined in relation to the institutional evolution of American capitalism. For the history of health care provisioning reveals the myriad of ways in which the system has been shaped by developments within the broader political economy of American 9 The original function of health insurance was income stabilization. Health insurance compensated sick workers for lost wages and was seen as a way to maintain the productive effort and political allegiance of the working class (Starr, 1982, p. 238). Germany adopted the first nationalized system in Following suit were Austria (1888), Hungary (1891), Norway (1909), Serbia (1910), Britain (1911), Russia (1912) and the Netherlands (1913). For more on this, see Mills (1937). 10

12 society. We therefore begin with an examination of the social, economic and political forces that laid the foundation for the emergence of the modern health care system. The Failure of National Health Insurance Proposals Throughout the nineteenth century, there was scarcely a market for health insurance in the United States. Family members cared for one another within the home, and there was little reliance on the services of doctors or hospitals. By the end of the nineteenth century, this was beginning to change. The increasing industrialization of the American economy initiated a breakdown of the household economy as: [F]amilies came to depend on the labor of their chief wage earner for income and on the services of doctors and hospitals for medical treatment. In individual households, sickness now interrupted the flow of income as well as the normal routine of domestic life, and it imposed unforeseen expenses for medical care... In the economy as a whole, illness had an indirect cost in diminished production as well as a direct cost in medical expenditure (Starr, 1982, p. 236). By the late 1920s, medicine began to play an even larger role in people s lives. Acute illnesses were increasingly treated at medical facilities (as opposed to homes) and hospitals became the centers for surgeries, X-rays and laboratories (Thomasson, 2002). Along with these advances came an increase in the costs of treating illness and a desire for some form of social protection to replace the traditional relations embedded in the household economy of pre-industrial America. In response to these and other developments, groups of social reformers arose in the early part of the twentieth century to champion the cause of compulsory national health insurance. 11

13 Inspired by the advances in social legislation achieved in the area of worker s compensation, the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) 10 produced the first such proposal in The legislation was designed to provide compulsory sickness insurance to industrial workers and their dependents. Specifically, the plan would cover sick pay for income lost due to illness and a lump-sum payment to assist with funeral expenses in the event of death. The plan was to be financed by contributions from workers and their employers with additional support from general tax revenues. The program was defended on the grounds of social justice and economic efficiency the former because it spread the risks of financial ruin and the latter because it mitigated the social costs of illness. The AALL s campaign for health insurance might have succeeded if Theodore Roosevelt, who was nominated by the Progressives in the election of 1912, had defeated Woodrow Wilson. However, the campaign got underway just as support for Progressivism, as a political force, was beginning to wane. It was two decades before there would be another political campaign to increase the involvement of the national government in the management of social welfare. This time it was President Franklin D. Roosevelt who believed that Americans needed some form of protection against the growing costs of illness and economic insecurity. During the Progressive Era, advocates for social insurance placed health insurance near the top of the agenda. But the nation s priorities were reordered in the ensuing years, as massive job loss during the Great Depression elevated unemployment insurance to the top of the 10 Founded in 1906, the AALL is best described as a group of social progressives. It consisted primarily of academics who were concerned with the extremes of capitalist industrialization e.g. child labor, unemployment and workplace disability. The association s membership included John R. Commons and Richard Ely, and Irving Fisher gave the presidential address to the AALL in 1916 (Starr, 1982, p. 246). 12

14 reform agenda. Although health insurance was no longer considered a top priority, Roosevelt came close to introducing legislation for universal health care coverage after his election in At the time, a proposal for universal health insurance was linked to the Social Security Act, which Roosevelt strongly supported. But the American Medical Association (AMA) had a great deal of political clout, and it strongly opposed a universal entitlement to health care. Roosevelt is said to have pulled his support for national health insurance in order to prevent the AMA from dooming his Social Security legislation (Blumenthal, 2006). So Roosevelt succeeded in providing Americans with Social Security, unemployment insurance and workmen s compensation, but he decided that health insurance would have to wait. 11 In 1945, while the war was winding down, Harry S. Truman became the first American president to wholeheartedly advocate for national health insurance. He proposed a single health insurance system to protect all classes of society, but his program met with considerable resistance on both professional and political fronts. As soon as the details of the plan were released, the National Physicians Committee issued an emergency bulletin encouraging doctors to oppose the program. More opposition from the medical profession came from the AMA, which stoked the fears of communist influence by claiming that doctors would become slaves under Truman s health insurance plan. Thus, the debates played out against the backdrop of cold war politics as the Republicans charged that national health insurance was part of a larger socialist 11 There is speculation that Roosevelt was talked out of pushing for universal coverage by a small group of physicians, including his son s father-in-law, with whom he reportedly had lunch the day before indicating that he was dropping the health insurance component of his Social Security legislation (Blumenthal, 2006). Toward the end of his life, Roosevelt revealed that he was planning to return to the health care agenda after the war was over (Starr, 1982). 13

15 scheme (Starr, 1982, p. 284). Meanwhile, private insurance strengthened its grip and support for Truman s plan dropped sharply in public opinion polls. By the late 1940s anticommunist sentiments and powerful lobbying efforts made the prospects for national health insurance vanishingly improbable (Starr, 1982, p. 285). The Emergence of an Employment-Based System: The demand for health insurance increased throughout the 1930s and 1940s, as the development of antibiotics and improvements in anti-infection techniques gave rise to an increased demand for medical care. The increasing supply and demand for health care with its attendant rise in prices required a means of financing which did not rely on family income and savings. However, a non-market based solution to rising costs and expenditures was precluded by the failure of reform proposals in the first part of the twentieth century. To fill this void, an alternative system of private health insurance emerged. Although they were initially reluctant to do so, hospitals and insurance companies helped to accommodate the growing demand for medical care and health insurance by organizing prepayment plans and marketing them directly to worker groups. Offering health insurance coverage to groups of employees yielded two major benefits to the underwriter. 12 First, it enabled them to overcome the problem of adverse selection (i.e. it was unlikely that a disproportionate share of those seeking coverage would be in poor health). Second, the plans allowed employers to deduct premiums from employee 12 Interestingly, the first health insurance plans were offered by hospitals and not by commercial insurance companies. The first Blue Cross plan was offered by Baylor University Hospital in 1929 as a means to ensure that patients paid their hospital bills (Thomasson, 2002, p. 237). 14

16 paychecks, thereby lowering the administrative costs associated with selling insurance (Thomasson, 2002). The popularity of these prepaid health insurance plans increased during the Great Depression, when hospitals relied on them in order to smooth receipts in the face of declining revenues. 13 The American Hospital Association (AHA) encouraged the proliferation of prepaid health plans, organizing them under the name Blue Cross, and state laws gave the plans tax-exempt status and allowed them to operate as nonprofit organizations. These enabling laws facilitated the availability and growth of prepaid health insurance (Thomasson, 2002, p. 238). But while many hospitals saw the benefits of offering prepaid policies, the physicians themselves tended to oppose health insurance because they feared that interference from a third party would restrict their income and limit their ability to price discriminate (ibid., p. 239). In time, they decided that it was in their interests to offer their own prepaid plans, so they introduced Blue Shield plans, which covered the reimbursement of physicians services. 14 Like the Blue Cross plans, Blue Shield plans were given tax-exempt status and permitted to operate as nonprofits. In exchange for these special provisions, Blue Cross and Blue Shield were initially required to community-rate their policies, which required them to charge different employee groups the same premium, regardless of their health status. 13 Mahar (2006) notes that average receipts per patient fell from $ to $59.26 in the aftermath of the Crash of Groups of physicians were so interested in protecting their ability to price discriminate that they ensured that laws were passed to prevent the Blue Cross plans from covering physician services (Thomasson, 2002). 15

17 The success of the Blues soon invited competition from commercial, for-profit insurance companies that were not required to community-rate their policies. When it came to marketing policies to healthy employee groups, the for-profit insurance companies could often undercut the Blues because they were allowed to experience-rate their policies, offering lower-priced policies to healthier employee groups and charging higher premiums to sicker groups. Competition intensified, and by the 1940s the market for private health insurance began to grow rapidly. Between 1940 and 1950, the number of Americans with private health insurance increased from 20.6 million to million (Blumenthal, 2006). But this explosion in coverage was not simply due to increased competition and a growing demand for health insurance. Rather, a series of government policies, passed in the 1940s and 1950s, provided private insurers with a new outlet for their services U.S. employers and paved the way for explosive growth in the health insurance industry. Responding to the inflationary pressures of a wartime economy, the federal government imposed wage and price controls to prevent employers from raising wages in order to compete for scarce labor. While stripping them of their power to increase wages, the 1942 Stabilization Act allowed employers to expand their benefit offerings. By permitting employers to offer health insurance to their employees, the government provided private insurers with a new market for their products. 15 In the years that followed, the government passed several additional rulings that reinforced the efforts of insurance companies to link health insurance with employment and institutionalized the employment-based system of health insurance that exists today. 15 A small number of U.S. companies offered health insurance coverage to their employees before WWII. 16

18 The first piece of legislation, passed by the War Labor Board in 1945, ruled that employers could not change or cancel an employee s insurance plan during the contract period. The second ruling, which became law in 1949, mandated that benefits should be considered part of the compensation package so that unions could haggle over both wages and health insurance in their contract negotiations. Finally, in 1954, the IRS decided that workers would not be taxed on the contributions that their employers made to their health insurance plans. 16 This preferential tax treatment for fringe benefits gave businesses an incentive to offer health insurance to their employees. In sum, employer-provided health insurance, as an institution, emerged during the two decades following WWII. The system is a legacy of Roosevelt s decision not to pursue universal health insurance in the 1930s. The decision has been called an early triumph of a vision championed by modern conservatives, in which the private sector in the United States fulfills essential social responsibilities assumed by governments in most other industrialized nations (Blumenthal, 2006, p. 83). As one would imagine, the private sector s ability to fulfill these responsibilities depends crucially on the economic fortunes of its business sector. The Postwar Golden Age and the Health Care Crisis of the 1970s With the employment-based system firmly in place by the mid-1950s, the incidence of employer-provided coverage expanded rapidly over the course of the next few decades. 16 Under the current tax code, health insurance premiums paid by employers on behalf of their employees are tax-deductible. President George W. Bush s tax advisory commission is considering sweeping cuts in the tax benefits of employer-provided health insurance. By reducing the tax break, many employers would be discouraged from providing health insurance coverage, pushing many employees into private insurance markets the goal of the policy and many more into the ranks of the uninsured. 17

19 The supply of health care was stimulated by various government initiatives in support of scientific research and hospital construction. The most important piece of social legislation during this period was the 1946 Hospital Survey and Construction Act (also known as the Hill-Burton Act), which provided states with grants to support the construction of new hospitals. However, despite the expansion of both the supply and demand sides of the health care industry, the fundamental organizational structure for the financing and delivery of health care remained intact. Most importantly, the financing of care remained largely retrospective, fee-forservice payment, with providers continuing to exert considerable control over pricing and regulatory decisions. This contributed to an explosion in costs and aggregate expenditures, but there was, at the time, no great sense of concern over health care inflation. Price increases were made tolerable by the economic expansion of the socalled Golden Age of capitalism, which generated rapid increases in output, employment and real wages. Thus, while the share of total expenditures going to health care had begun to increase sharply, much of the increased spending was considered justified in the face of scientific advances and increasing economic prosperity. As the expansion continued, those with ties to the labor market enjoyed an increase in the richness of their benefits. But enhancements also reached those without such ties. The economy was booming, and many Americans had come to believe that a great nation must ensure a minimum level of health care for its citizens. To provide for those without employer-based coverage, Congress enacted Medicaid and Medicare as part of the Great Society program in

20 The passage of these bills had two immediate effects. First, they substantially enlarged the U.S. health care market. Millions of Americans who previously lacked health insurance now enjoyed coverage under one of these publicly funded plans. Second, they altered the composition of health care spending. As the government covered a larger portion of the health care bill, the share of out-of-pocket spending decreased. The combined effects of the increase in federal funding and the decrease in out-of-pocket spending generated sharp increases in the price of health care: From 1960 to 1975 the share of health care expenditures paid by third parties increased from 45 to 67 percent. Like most private plans, Medicare and Medicaid reimburse providers on a fee-forservice basis. Since under fee-for-service, doctors and hospitals make more money the more services they provide, they have an incentive to maximize the volume of services. Third-party fee-forservice payment was the central mechanism of medical inflation (Starr, 1982, p. 385). 17 Throughout the 1970s, sharp increases in medical costs spawned various forms of legislation aimed at slowing the pace of health care inflation. For example, in August 1971, President Nixon imposed wage and price controls in an effort to contain inflationary pressures. 18 These efforts continued in 1972, with the creation of Professional Standards Review Organizations, which were designed to limit the expansion of Medicare costs by increasing the oversight of physician practices. In 1973, the government sought a managed care solution to the problem of rising health care costs by passing the Federal HMO Act. 19 With health costs still mounting, the 17 The reimbursement practice for hospitals and doctors has since changed. Today, Medicare and Medicaid reimburse health providers on a fixed fee schedule. 18 In most sectors of the economy, these controls were lifted in January 1973, but they were maintained for health care until April 30, The Federal HMO Act did a number of things to promote the creation and expansion of HMOs. First, it provided seed money for nonprofit HMOs. Second, it offered eligible 19

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August 7, 2009 Health Care Reform: The Need for Pragmatic, Bipartisan Solutions For many years, the American people have sent two clear messages about the nation s healthcare system. First, Americans want

Employer Purchasing Pools: California s Experience Making Health Insurance Available to Small Employers By John Grgurina, Jr. T his chapter describes PacAdvantage, the country s largest non-profit small-employer,

Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2009 and 2010 estimates) Emmanuel Saez March 2, 2012 What s new for recent years? Great Recession 2007-2009 During the

In June 2014, the Board of Directors of the American Benefits Council (the Council) approved a long-term public policy strategic plan, A 2020 Vision: Flexibility and the Future of Employee Benefits. It

National Rural Health Association Policy Brief Underinsurance among Farm and Ranch Families and Other Small Business People Undermines Benefits of Insurance Coverage Introduction Health insurance coverage

Health Insurance Part 1 Health Policy Eric Jacobson Introduction The field of health care has made great strides during the last century. This increase in quality has been accompanied by a much greater

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT The Burden of Health Insurance Premium Increases on American Families SEPTEMBER 22, 2009 Health insurance premiums for American families continue to skyrocket. A report

Individual Family FAQ s Frequently Asked Questions By Topic Individual and Family Health Insurance Why will individual and family health insurance work for me? What kinds of individual and family insurance

What s in Healthcare Reform for Women-Owned Small Businesses? In March 2010, Congress passed legislation that will fix the serious problems that all small business owners, including those owned by women,

Selected Employer Provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 This chart outlines, in depth, selected provisions in the Patient

DataWatch The Health Insurance Picture In 1993: Some Rare Good News by Jon Gabel, Derek Liston, Gail Jensen, and Jill Marsteller Abstract: Based on a national survey conducted in spring 1993 of 1,953 private

AN OVERVIEW OF THE MEDICARE PROGRAM AND MEDICARE BENEFICIARIES COSTS AND SERVICE USE Statement of Juliette Cubanski, Ph.D. Associate Director, Program on Medicare Policy The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation